


Too Close

by Taskir



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Based on Roleplay, F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Poverty, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 23:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16922610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taskir/pseuds/Taskir
Summary: Title and italics interspersed throughout are adapted from the poemI am too close for himby Wislawa Szymborska.Originally written... christ, 2000?  2001?  Posted on LJ in 2004 at least.





	Too Close

**Author's Note:**

> Title and italics interspersed throughout are adapted from the poem _I am too close for him_ by Wislawa Szymborska. 
> 
> Originally written... christ, 2000? 2001? Posted on LJ in 2004 at least.

_I am too close for her to dream about me._  
_I'm not flying over, not fleeing her_  
_under the roots of trees. I am too close._  
_Not with my voice sings the fish in the net._  
_Not from my finger rolls the ring._  
_I am too close._  


 

She came over again last night. I didn’t want to see her. I was nearly passed out from drinking and the minute I woke up to her knocks I felt the beginnings of a hangover that was only going to be worse come morning. I knew it was her knocking; no one else ever visits me out here.

That’s not exactly true. Bahorel stops by now and then when he wants someone to go drinking with--or at least he did before he became serious about Gabrielle. But even if it were him, he’d never come looking for me at nearly 2 am, so that left only one person. 

Of course it was her. She looked perfect, in that effortless way she always does. Said she couldn’t sleep. Well, now with her here I can’t either, so I sit surrounded by crumpled paper and watch her breathing, and try to get the exact shade of red that I need when I finally work up the courage to draw her.

I’m trying to come up with new words for her hair. I’m an artist, dammit, or at least I pretend to be. I don’t work with yellow, blue, and green: I paint in gold and lemon, cerulean and aqua, emerald and chartreuse. But for the life of me I can’t find a better word for her hair than red. It’s just red, that’s all there is to it. It’s not scarlet or vermilion or ruby, it’s red. It’s the same red that I’m reaching for every night in my dreams and that, when I wake, melts like smoke in my hands.

 _A large house is on fire_  
_without my calling for help. Too close_  
_for a bell dangling from my hair to chime._  
_Too close for me to enter as a guest_  
_before whom the walls part._  
_Never again will I die so readily,_  
_so far beyond the flesh, so inadvertently_  
_as once in her dream. I am too close,_  
_too close—_  


 

She’d run if she knew I thought about her like this. I know that she would. I promised her, I swore to her I only wanted her friendship. And that’s really true, it is...if I can’t ever have anything else from her, I still want that. But at the same time it’s damned hard. She comes to me to be comforted; to have a friend who consoles her and tells her everything is all right. And I do it, because I love her...and because I tell myself it’s the right thing to do. I hold her, I stroke her hair, I let her sleep in my bed, all the things a good supportive companion ought to do.

Meanwhile, every time she presses against me to cry, I have to fight not to cradle her. I battle myself, trying not to imagine pulling her closer to feel the soft push of her body. I deny to myself how much I want to lift her head and kiss her mouth, stop her tears and words and simply feel her lips burning mine. Most of all, I watch my hands shake as they try to simply pet her hair in a comforting manner, instead of plunging into that mass of damned red hair, burying both hands and my face in it, inhaling her until there isn’t any more apartment, no more Paris, no more cause, no more revolution, no more past between either of us, there’s just me and her and her hair that smells like --well, I can’t place what it smells like exactly. Why should that come as a surprise, really; if I can’t categorize it by hue, why even attempt scent?

Besides, I know how she smells. She spends almost every other night in my bed, trust me, I know her scent...like smoke and night air and red wine. She smells like that, as much as I smell like oil and turpentine and paper shavings. But her hair...in my fantasy that’s something else altogether. Her hair smells like every good red thing that ever existed: fresh apples and ripe strawberries, full-blown roses and red wine still, but a sweeter and cleaner red wine than people like me will ever taste.

  
_I am too close_  
_to fall out of the sky for her. My scream_  
_might only awaken her. Poor me,_  
_limited to my own form,_  
_but I was a birch tree, I was a lizard,_  
_I emerged from satins and sundials_  
_my skins shimmering in different colors. I possessed_  
_the grace to disappear from astonished eyes,_  
_and that is the rich man's riches. I am too close,_  
_too close for her to dream about me._  


 

Of course, all of this is impossible. Nothing more than my dreams and fantasies that do well enough to keep me company when she’s not here, but when she is, cause me torment and strife. No matter how much I want to do these things, I won’t, not ever. Because I care about her too much, for one. And for another, it’s doubtful that I’ll ever be allowed to touch her like that when she doesn’t even feel comfortable sleeping next to me.

The bed is big enough for both of us, and she knows that I would die before I tried anything. But she can’t sleep when I’m in the bed with her. I can hold her until she’s nearly drifted off, but if I try to lay down next to her, even fully clothed, she gets nervous and is up and trembling again like a puppy afraid of a storm.

I think it’s this that hurts the most. Children like she and I seem to be raised on one of two ends of the spectrum of touch: too much or not enough. She’s most definitely evidence of the former, I of the latter.

As far as I can remember, I’ve been on the streets since I was able to toddle. I never found comfort in words or actions of anyone. There are so many nights I remember falling asleep outside a nursery window, hearing a mother tuck in a child, and weeping so hard I thought surely someone would hear and chase me away. The ache for some sort of tactile attention was overpowering. It was as though there was a great gaping hole in my chest. All I wanted was a pat on the head or a stroke on the cheek--or even, in my wildest dreams, a hug--and that place, I felt would be filled. 

Of course, I had no such luck. I grew up and I put my desire for touch to other uses. I learned to paint, teaching my hands to find comfort in creating, to take solace in canvas and chalk. It helped, and it still helps now, as I’m quietly tracing sketches of her face and hands while she sleeps, trying to ignore the great ache in me.

Because that’s all I’d want. I wouldn’t care if we slept together or not, but if she would just let me hold her all through the night...if I could wake up to feel the warmth of her arm stretched across my chest, I wouldn’t care if Enjolras and Jesus Christ himself knocked down my door with their feet and demanded I start tearing up paving stones that instant, I wouldn’t budge. If I could just have her close to me, her arms around me while she went on in peaceful, dreamless sleep, occasionally letting me smell her hair...then I could quite easily let the world fall down. I would welcome it without a second thought.

But I can’t do that.

I’m just her friend. I care about her. I don’t want to hurt her.

I am too close.


End file.
